Using the Video

Post Interface

Post-production typically takes place in an external package, such as Discreet’s Combustion or Adobe’s After Effects, but Max

includes an interface to add some effects.

You can use the Video Post window to composite the final rendered image with several other images and filters. These filters let you add lens effects like glows and flares, and other effects like blur and fade, to the final output. The Video Post window provides a post-processing environment within the Max interface.

Note Many of the post-processing effects such as glows and blurs are also available as render effects, but the Video Post window is capable of much more.

Completing Post-Production with the Video Post Interface

Post-production is the work that comes after the scene is rendered. It is the time when you add effects, such as glows and highlights, as well as add transitional effects to an animation. For example, if you want to include a logo in the lower right-hand corner of your animation, you can create and render the logo and composite several rendered images into one during post-production.

Video Post interface is the post-processing interface within Max that you can use to combine the current scene with different images, effects, and image processing filters. Compositing is the process of combining several different images into a single image. Each element of the composite is included as a separate event. These events are all lined up in a queue and processed in the order in which they appear in the queue. The queue can also include looping events.

The Video Post interface, like the Render Scene dialog box (covered in Chapter 41, “Rendering Basics”), provides another way to produce final output. You can think of the Video Post process as an artistic assembly line. As the image moves down the line, each item in the queue adds an image, drops a rendered image on the stack, or applies a filter effect. This process continues until the final output event is reached.

47C H A P T E R

In This Chapter

Learning about post-processing

Using the Video

Post interface

Working with sequences

Understanding the various filter types

Adding and editing events

Specifying event ranges

Using the Lens

Effects filters

1094 Part XI Compositing and Post-Production

The Video Post interface, shown in Figure 47-1, includes a toolbar, a pane of events and ranges, and a status bar. You can open it by choosing Rendering Video Post.

Toolbar Queue pane

Time bar

Range pane

Figure 47-1: The Video Post interface lets you composite images with your final rendering.

In many ways, the Video Post interface is similar to the Track View interfaces. Each event is displayed as a track in the Queue pane to the left. To the right is the Range pane where the range for each track is displayed as lines with square boxes at each end. You can edit these ranges by dragging the squares on either end. The time bar, above the Range pane, displays the frames for the current sequence, and the status bar at the bottom of the interface includes information and view buttons.

The Video Post toolbar

At the top of the Video Post interface is a toolbar with several buttons for managing the Video Post features. Table 47-1 shows and explains these buttons.

Table 47-1: Video Post Toolbar Buttons

Toolbar Button	Name	Description
	New Sequence	Creates a new sequence
	Open Sequence	Opens an existing sequence
	Save Sequence	Saves the current sequence
	Edit Current Event	Opens the Edit Current Event dialog box where you can
		edit events
	Delete Current Event	Removes the current event from the sequence
	Swap Events	Changes the position in the queue of two selected
		events

Chapter 47 Using the Video Post Interface 1095

	Toolbar Button	Name	Description
		Execute Sequence	Runs the current sequence
		Edit Range Bar	Enables you to edit the event ranges
		Align Selected Left	Aligns the left ranges of the selected events
		Align Selected Right	Aligns the right ranges of the selected events
		Make Selected	Makes the ranges for the selected events the same size
		Same Size
		Abut Selected	Places event ranges end-to-end
		Add Scene Event	Adds a rendered scene to the queue
		Add Image Input Event	Adds an image to the queue
		Add Image Filter Event	Adds an image filter to the queue
		Add Image Layer Event	Adds a compositing plug-in to the queue
		Add Image Output Event Sends the final composited image to a file or device
		Add External Event	Adds an external image-processing event to the queue
		Add Loop Event	Causes other events to loop

The Video Post Queue and Range panes

Below the toolbar are the Video Post Queue and Range panes. The Queue pane is on the left; it lists all the events to be included in the post-processing sequence in the order in which they are processed. You can rearrange the order of the events by dragging an event in the queue to its new location.

You can select multiple events by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the event names, or you can select one event, hold down the Shift key, and click another event to select all events between the two.

Each event has a corresponding range that appears in the Range pane to the right. Each range is shown as a line with a square on each end. The left square marks the first frame of the event, and the right square marks the last frame of the event. You can expand or contract these ranges by dragging the square on either end of the range line.

1096 Part XI Compositing and Post-Production

If you click the line between two squares, you can drag the entire range. If you drag a range beyond the given number of frames, then additional frames are added.

The time bar is at the top of the Range pane. This bar shows the number of total frames included in the animation. You can also slide the time bar up or down to move it closer to a specific track by dragging it.

The Video Post status bar

The status bar includes a prompt line, several value fields, and some navigation buttons. The fields to the right of the prompt line include Start, End, Current Frames, and the Width and Height of the image. The navigation buttons include (in order from left to right) Pan, Zoom Extents, Zoom Time, and Zoom Region.

Working with Sequences

All the events that are added to the Queue pane make up a sequence. You can save these sequences and open them at a later time. The Execute Sequence button, found on the toolbar, starts the compositing process.

To save a sequence, click the Save button on the toolbar to open the Save Sequence dialog box, where you can save the queue sequence. Sequences are saved along with the Max file when the scene is saved, but they can also be saved independently of the scene. By default, these files are saved with the .VPX extension in the vpost directory.

Note	Saving a sequence as a VPX file maintains the elements of the queue, but it resets all param-
	eter settings. Saving the file as a Max file maintains the queue order along with the parame-
	ter settings.

You can open saved sequences using the Open Sequence button on the toolbar. When a saved sequence is opened, all the current events are deleted. Clicking the New Sequence button also deletes any current events.

The Execute Sequence toolbar button opens the Execute Video Post interface, shown in Figure 47-2. The controls in this dialog box work exactly the way those in the Render Scene dialog box work.

Figure 47-2: The Execute Video Post interface includes the controls for producing the queue output.